BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA -- The editor of Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism, an online anthology, will launch an excerpt from Gregory Rabassa's yet-to-be published translation,
My World is Not of This Kingdom, at the website April 15, 2000.

Rabassa is an internationally acclaimed translator well known for bringing Gabriel García Márquez's works of magical realism to the English-speaking world. He has compared his latest translation -- of Portuguese author João de Melo's best-selling novel O Meu Mundo Não É Deste Reino -- favorably to García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

"When I began reading My World is Not of This Kingdom, I thought for a moment that I was back in Macondo," Rabassa said. "The characters were larger than life and the stuff of mythology. This novel by João de Melo is another masterpiece."

Tamara Kaye Sellman, editor of Margin, plans to publish both English and Portuguese versions of the two-chapter excerpt. "One of the many advantages of Internet publishing lies in our ability to make bilingual work immediately accessible to anybody anywhere in the world," she said.

Sellman launched Margin in January 2000. In three months, thousands of unique visitors from more than 25 countries have visited the site, many making repeat visits. Sellman hopes that publishing both excerpts electronically will inspire American book publishers to pursue Rabassa's complete translation, which she characterizes as "elegant and wondrous."

"João de Melo and Gregory Rabassa together constitute a profound tour de force — it would be a shame if English-speaking readers were denied this fusion of brilliance," she said.

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